


The blue Blue Paladin

by averypottermormon



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, I promise, It's just pure angst, Keith (Voltron) is observant, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Langst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Lance (Voltron), Seriously guys, This Is Sad, at least for now it is, i don't know yet, i just haven't gotten that far, i might keep going, it doesn't even have a happy end, moreso than anyone realizes, there'll be a happy ending, these boys are gonna pine so much it's gonna be a freakin' forest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-07 11:43:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12232143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/averypottermormon/pseuds/averypottermormon
Summary: From a tumblr prompt:"Okay, but what if the team went to a planet that thrived off emotions. Like they lived off of them. The stronger the emotion, the stronger they became. Like emotions kept their planet alive, it was the fuel that kept the lights on and the whole planet running, it was like electricity. Now imagine that Allura and the team are forming an alliance with them, and the aliens show them how it works. There’s this little platform with a smoky white orb displayed. They simply explain that all you have to do is press your palm against the orb, and boom. You contribute whatever emotion you’re feeling to the planet.Now imagine Lance walking up to it, not saying a word, and just barely grazes the orb, and the entire planet just lights up. The lights get too bright to bear, some even exploding, and they can physically hear the hum of the energy in the air. The team looks in awe at the various blues that now light up the planet. One of the Paladins says “Wow Lance, I didn’t know you were /that/ excited about this mission.” Then one of the aliens just had the awed, grave look on their face and all they can say is “These colors do not mean happiness. They represent anguish.”"





	1. Blue Luxus

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys! this is my first fic in the voltron fandom and i have this one friend who keeps telling me to write something so i saw this prompt come across my dashboard and people were asking for a fic so i did the thing. let me know if you want me to keep writing on this because i may or may not have more ideas? so yeah! let me know if i should continue it! :)

Since the new paladins arrived, Team Voltron had responded to more distress signals than not, and this day was nothing new. A signal had come on the radar along with a short message that was cutting in and out. It appeared to be an electrical issue when the recording had taken place, and not a second thought was spared before Allura opened a wormhole to the planet Luxus.

The paladins arrived on the scene in their lions to a Galra fleet raining fire on a planet that was flickering bright red and blue.

“Now that’s a scene I haven’t seen in years,” Coran called out into the comms enthusiastically.

Keith rolled his eyes. Sometimes he didn’t know what that man was on about. He was back in the red lion once again since Shiro had been found - which was another story in and of itself. Wishing to make his impatience known, he popped up, red on red in the cockpit light, on the comms screen. “We literally fight Galra fleets every day.”

Coran barked a laugh and said, “Not that, number four. The planet! It’s flickering!”

Keith glanced at the planet on the main display, then back to Coran. “We can see that.” He looked back at the planet. The colors weren’t unlike bioluminescent algae he had seen in textbooks back in the biology classes he had to unfortunately take at the Garrison. Lost in thought, it took him a moment to realize Coran was still talking. He rolled his eyes and tuned out the distraction to inspect the colors a little more. The flickering was inconsistent, but there was a constant undertone of an aqua blue. It was quite beautiful, if he said so himself.

Coran had started in on a story of his youth when suddenly a Galra ship started firing on them, the rest of the fleet following suit shortly. They needed Voltron to solve the problem, and when they were together slicing the ships to bits, Keith felt the same curiosity edging its way from both Pidge and Hunk. They had formed Voltron enough times for Keith to recognize who was thinking and feeling what while they were mentally connected like this. Everyone had their own unique feeling. Pidge was calculating; Hunk was warm. Shiro he’d known for a long enough time to know what he was thinking even when they weren’t connected with a neural transmitter. And Lance… Well, let’s just say what Lance thought stuck out to Keith the most. He had the most vibrant emotions and the most joy, the most concern out of the entire team. It was something that Keith had reluctantly admitted to himself that he loved about the blue paladin, whether or not he admitted it out loud.

Lance, this time, though, was a different story, and it was worrying to Keith. It was as though someone had taken a bucket of gray paint and dumped it on the bright yellows and blues he gave off normally. Keith was never good at words when it came to talking about his emotions, but he knew he would have to talk to Lance about it once the mission was over.

But first, kicking Galra butt was in order.

–

The castle and the lions landed in a clearing outside of the main city, where the Luxians came out to greet and thank the paladins for coming and saving their planet from the grasp of the Galra.

Keith and the other paladins were swarmed by Luxians, and Allura was speaking to the Luxian king, when Keith noticed Lance was not with them. He searched for the blue paladin, sweeping his eyes across the sea of shorter humanoids that looked strangely like Ewoks. He finally looked toward the blue lion, where he saw Lance staring at the ground.

Keith made his way over the Blue, anxiety rising in the back of his mind. Why was Lance not leaving Blue? Did something happen to him during the fight? Was he okay? Ordinarily Keith tried his best to quell emotions like anxiousness and fear, but this was an odd circumstance.

On his way over, he noticed several Luxians looking at the ground where he had walked. Curiosity got the better of him and he looked, too.

His footprints were a violent shade of orange. He looked down at his feet, and there was an increasing pool of orange and red light.

That made his anxiety worse.

As he kept watching, the spot expanded.

He ripped his stare from his feet and refocused on Lance, who was now watching him. The sudden attention made him self-conscious, despite the fact that Luxians had been looking at him for a solid twenty minutes with increasing interest. The pool of light around his feet tinged pink where he stepped now.

Huh, he thought. The ground seems to be reacting to emotions. Funny.

“Lance!” Keith called out, jogging the last thirty feet to stand near Blue’s ramp, where Lance was currently standing in the middle. The ground below the ramp was a blue purple with the spot directly under Lance being a brighter blue, not unlike the color from before when the planet was under attack.

Lance, who hadn’t taken his eyes off of Keith since they made eye contact earlier, was now looking at the ground at Keith’s feet.

Neither of them made a move, and neither of them said anything. But Keith could tell something was very, very wrong.

Before he could say anything, Lance shook his head side to side and wiped his face with a gloved hand before turning to Keith with a big smile - fake.

“C’mon, Mr. Grumpypants,” Lance said a little too loudly, a little too brightly. “Let’s go check out the party!”

Lance confidently - fake - walked down the ramp on his way to where the rest of the paladins, Allura, and Coran were now being congratulated and praised by the locals.

As soon as Lance stepped foot on the ground, the grass, the dirt, the weeds and little plants all exploded into a bright royal blue, almost the color of the paladin’s armor. It spread out along the ground in a great wave, quickly overtaking Keith’s pink and orange footsteps. It spread across the field in mere ticks, and up into the trees ticks after that. The whole of Luxus seemed to take on the appearance of the waves of the ocean, bright blues and teals and a hint of purple here and there.

At this development, Lance showed no concern. He continued walking toward the other paladins. Everyone else was transfixed on Lance, on the bright colors that shimmered each time he took another step.

They finally reached Allura and the king, where Allura, Hunk, Pidge, and Shiro were all staring at Lance with wide eyes.

“What?” Lance asked innocently.

After a bit of silence, it’s Coran that speaks up, twisting his orange mustache. “If you’d been paying attention to my tales of childhood piracy from earlier, you’d remember I said this place thrives on emotions. It’s like electricity! It makes everything work! Which is why the transmission was having problems earlier, because people were panicking and that makes it unstable!”

Keith silently watched Lance’s face shift from false bravado to stone. Keith knew that Lance controlled his emotions and reactions in front of others for their sakes, but this time, he didn’t know what he was hiding from whom.

Hunk was the next to speak. “Heh, Lance, I didn’t realize you were that excited about the mission.”

The king stepped forward, up to Lance and where he stood. Keith examined how his eyes changed from curiosity to recognition, and from recognition to pity and sorrow.

He turned around and spoke, his voice grave. “These colors do not mean happiness. They represent anguish.”

Lance turned around immediately and ran back to Blue. If Keith hadn’t been watching him intently, he would not have seen the tears that started to stream down his face.

Yeah, Keith definitely needed to talk to Lance.


	2. All too well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was some angst. Now there is Keith's determination to make Lance happy. And awful meetings and subsequent coughing fits and proooobably a lot of pining.

Keith had waited after the crowd had dispersed, in all likelihood to leave for the evening meal. He waited long into the darkness, sitting on a rock that jutted out of the ground near Red. The three moons hung low in the sky, each dimmer than the last, thanks to the planets in the system blocking the star they orbited. The blue of the vegetation from Lance’s stepping on it had begun to fade, and it was almost dark enough that human eyes couldn’t distinguish color, when there was a fluctuation of color in the grass. A mechanical sound. Metallic steps. Gears grinding, and Blue’s maw opening.

The following image burned itself in Keith’s memory; Lance - bright, shining, beautiful Lance - slumping out of his lion in the middle of the night, red rimmed eyes above deep purple bags, feet heavy as he trudged through the trampled grass. Another wave of vibrant blue gushed from each step, accompanied by a sigh Keith knew all too well as one of resignation. With each step, Keith could see more of the exhaustion on Lance’s face. That was something else Keith knew all too well.

Keith had wanted to reach out, to say something, to tell him it was okay to talk to someone… but even Keith knew when he didn’t know how to verbalize talking about feelings. This was one of those times.

So instead of saying something, or doing anything else, he followed Lance silently.

\--

It had taken no time at all for Lance to go “back to normal” – fake – since the incident with the entire planet turning blue. Ever since Lance had stepped foot on the grass again, the blue maintained. The waves of indigo and turquoise were as radiant and brilliant as ever, pulsing out from wherever Lance was. The colors reminded Keith very much of the aberrations in Lance’s eyes, which made them, and Luxus, all the more beautiful to Keith. Sad, yes, but beautiful regardless.

Lance was his flirty self. Self-confident. Unconcerned and unfazed by the stares of pity and reverence from the Luxians who surrounded him, passed him. Seemingly carefree. Fake. Keith knew Lance too well for this to continue. He made up his mind after lunch that first day that he was going to talk to Lance. At some point.

\--

Four days had passed since Lance had exited Blue. After breakfast, during an odd moment where Team Voltron was not surrounded by Luxians, Keith had asked Allura why they had stayed for so long on Luxia when on other planets they would have been gone within the day. The others looked on in curiosity, all except for Lance.

Allura looked uncomfortable. She glanced to Lance, and Keith followed her gaze. Lance was staring at one of the buttons on his traditional Luxian garb, which each paladin had been gifted in their respective color schemes. He frowned and rubbed the navy button until it shined like silver, then glanced up, meeting Keith’s eyes for a moment before scraping his chair along the floor and standing, nearly tripping over it as he hastily ran from the room.

Hunk was the first to voice his thoughts, raising a thumb to point at Lance’s retreating figure. “What’s with Lance?”

The hairs on the back of Keith’s neck stood on end. He had a bad feeling that what just happened with Lance was part of the reason – or entirely the reason – they hadn’t left Luxia yet.

Allura let out a deep sigh, and all the paladins shifted their focus back to the princess, who looked suddenly more tired than she had in a long time.

“The planet…” she began. She brought a hand to rub across her face, eyebrows knit together as she pieced together what she was going to say.

Keith had had a lot of practice in reading his teammates’ thoughts based on their eyebrows. Making eye contact was still a new thing for him, so he had to make due with expressions, which worked more often than not. And as with everything, the exception to the rule was the paladin who had just unceremoniously bolted from the room; Keith could make eye contact with Lance (he could stare into Lance’s eyes for days, but he wasn’t about to admit that out loud), but there was no way in any star system Keith could ever read what Lance was thinking.

Keith began to speak a moment before Allura did.

“Lance—”

“It has to do with Lance.”

A beat of silence turned into several, during which you could hear gears turning in everyone’s heads, but you would be hard-pressed to find someone who wanted to actually say what they were thinking.

Allura began again, but not before sighing deeply one more time. “When Lance stepped out of the Blue Lion on the day we arrived, something in the planet resonated with Lance stronger than it had with anyone for decapheebs, perhaps longer. There is only one instance in written history where something even remotely similar happened, and it was only on a town-scale. There has never been something this drastic as to include the whole planet.”

Clockwork and gears turned for another moment. Keith put two and two together, but Shiro beat him to the punch: “So what you’re saying is we can’t leave until Lance fixes this.”

“I’m afraid so, Shiro. Yes.”

Pidge was next. “But the other day the ground faded when Lance was back in the Blue Lion. So wouldn’t that mean getting him off of the planet would change it back?”

Hunk followed suit. “I get that this is a big thing, because literally it’s an entire planet, but how is one person supposed to fix that? I mean, we all know Lance and he’s pretty in touch with his emotions, but how on earth does something like this happen?”

Allura shook her head gently as she spoke softly. “I don’t know how we could have missed this.”

Keith hadn’t noticed when Coran had removed himself from his seat, as Coran was now standing behind Allura’s chair, a hand resting on her shoulder as he bent forward slightly to address the table. “If I know my boy, it’s because he never wanted us to know. This is his fight. It’s an honor battle within himself. No one can help you win that but yourself.”

Keith stood from his chair, face passive, reserved. Lance wasn’t the only one who could control their emotions. He turned and left, heading towards the open door leading to the hallway. He stopped in the threshold, looking back and saying nothing. The eyes of his teammates followed him as he left, but none of them stopped him.

\--

Keith was no expert on emotions. Really, he wasn’t. There was no way on earth – or Luxia, as the case was – that he could figure out emotions in one day. That was not happening.

But that wasn’t what needed to happen.

What Keith knew needed to happen, was for Lance to have support. Sure, in an honor battle you can’t have someone else fight for you. But there’s nothing that says you can’t have someone in your corner.

\--

When Lance didn’t show up for dinner that night, Keith knew exactly when he was going to talk to Lance. Which was after dinner.

Which was unfortunate, because currently, the team was having their collective ear talked off by the court historian. Who was speaking in native Luxian. Which Keith didn’t speak, nor did he have an interest in speaking. He needed to get to Lance. He needed to get out.

And instead of asking to be excused, Keith began a self-induced coughing fit, and in doing so hoarsely excused himself from the banquet hall. If he went too quickly, no one said anything.

His fit caused him to genuinely cough, the side-splitting kind you couldn’t stand for. He half-caved into an alcove to try to cough quietly to himself, but of course that wouldn’t have worked. Someone approached him as he sank to the floor, hands covering his face. His eyes were squeezed shut, with tiny drops of tears leaking from the corners, so whoever was coming over to him was obscured. Despite that, there was only one other person on the planet who was the size of a normal human, and there was definitely only one person anywhere who sounded so sweet, even when worried.

“Keith? Are you okay? Can you talk? Are you choking? What did they do to you?” Lance fretted over Keith, who lay on the floor, trying to catch his breath after coughing for so long. Keith swatted his hand at Lance’s, which were hovering over him, not daring to touch in fear of making something inexplicably worse.

“I’m fine,” Keith croaked. He rolled his eyes up at the weirdly high white ceilings. Why do these people need such high ceilings when they’re, like, three feet tall?

“Like hell you are,” Lance huffed as he grabbed the swatting hand and pulled him upright into a half-embrace, rubbing and patting Keith’s back with his free hand.  
Keith’s coughing subsided and used his now free hands to wipe away the tears that had gathered in his eyes, using the backs of his wrists to transfer the moisture to his bright red leggings.

Lance noticed.

“Aw, Keith, are you sad to see me?” Lance asked in a mocking soft tone. Keith narrowed his eyes at Lance. He was very tempted to stick his tongue out, too.

“Unfortunately no.”

Lance stopped at the words wide-eyed, which Keith quickly realized had come from him. He had to cover his tracks fast, or Lance was gonna know about this awful crush–

“Hey man, no need to be so sentimental,” Lance said with a smile and a playful nudge to the shoulder. Lance had that ability to make everything better, to make it not awkward. Keith needed that so much. He was only awkward, and Lance, when he was being serious, was anything but. Keith couldn’t help but smile.

He figured he’d best stick to the truth. “Actually, I was just going to look for you,” Keith said stiffly.

Lance sat up a little straighter. “Really? I was coming to look for you. I mean, all of you guys,” he added. If Keith were more certain of his vision at that point after all of that coughing, he would have sworn there was an ever so slight dusting of pink on Lance’s cheeks. “I was wondering what was keeping you guys, and I wanted to play a game or watch a movie or something.” Lance reached a hand back to scratch the back of his head.

“How fortuitous,” Keith deadpanned. Lance’s presence ruined the feeling he was going for, because Lance was just too cute to keep from smirking at him.

“Wow, Keith, using big words, I’m so proud of you!” Lance laughed, music to Keith’s ears, and Keith couldn’t help but smile a genuine smile. Usually genuine smiles of his were hard to come by, but once again, the exception to almost every single one of Keith’s rules, Lance brought them out in him more than anyone else he ever knew, even Shiro.

“Let’s go, yeah?” Lance said grinning, offering his hand and pulling them both up.

“Yeah,” Keith smiled back.

They headed down the hall, still hand in hand. If Keith was dying (which he was), he didn’t say anything (because he couldn’t). If Lance was dying… well, Keith couldn’t tell what he was thinking anyway, so he just left his hand where it was. They had been holding hands for so long that it would be awkward to take his back now, so he couldn’t do that. Even he was socially well-rehearsed enough to know that undoing something after having it been a thing for a while was even more awkward than having done the thing in the first place. Which is how Keith and Lance ended up holding hands all the way back to their assigned place in the palace.  
And if palace staff saw where Keith and Lance had stepped in the hallway had turned pink instead of blue, none of them said anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! thanks for all of the positive feedback! i'm honestly genuinely surprised that so many of you have liked my writing it just. i am deceased. rip me. thank u ;_;
> 
> anyway, if you can, please comment and tell me anything i can do better! i want to make this the best experience you can have with reading a thing and i just want you guys to be proud of me ;_;
> 
> i love all of you so much


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